On the Second Amendment, the presidential election presents a stark choice.

John McCain has a very good, although not perfect, record on the Second Amendment. Barack Obama has a nearly perfect anti-gun record, and he is, appropriately, endorsed by the Brady Campaign. Yet the Obama campaign has the audacity to hope that it can deceive voters about Obama’s record.

John McCain has forthrightly told gun rights advocates when he disagrees with them. Back in 2000, he appeared in Colorado commercials supporting an initiative that imposed special restrictions on gun shows. With Sen. Joe Lieberman, McCain sponsored an even worse federal anti-gun-show bill. The gun-show issue is premised on the claim that there is a “gun-show loophole,” even though the federal law and (pre-2000) Colorado law for sales at gun shows have been exactly the same as for gun sales everywhere else.

Gun shows aside, McCain has a nearly unblemished record of 22 years in Congress voting for Second Amendment rights. This year, he joined Colorado Sens. Salazar and Allard, and a bipartisan majority of both houses of Congress, in an amicus brief before the Supreme Court. The brief urged the Supreme Court to affirm the Second Amendment as an individual right, and to declare unconstitutional the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns and ban on use of any firearm for self-defense in the home.

Sen. Obama refused to join that brief. On Feb. 11, he told WJLA-TV in Washington that he supported the D.C. ban. (Video at www.sportsmenforobama.org/content/view/78/). The Obama campaign announced, “Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional,” according to the Nov. 20, 2007, edition of the Chicago Tribune.

At the time Obama was in the Illinois State Senate, Chicago and five of its suburbs banned handguns. State Sen. Obama voted three times against Senate Bill 2615 (2004), which said a person could not be punished for violating a local handgun ban if the person actually used the gun for lawful self-defense in her own property. Obama was one of only eight members of the 177-person Illinois legislature to oppose the self-defense law.

State Sen. Obama did thwart another self-defense bill. Senate Bill 604 (2001) would have copied a California statute which says that a person can carry a handgun for protection if she is the beneficiary of a court-issued protective order against a stalker, domestic violence perpetrator, or other threatening person.

Unlike Illinois, Colorado is one of the 40 states which issues concealed handgun carry permits to adults who have passed a background check and a safety class. Obama, however, favors a federal law to prohibit states from issuing carry licenses, according to the Sept. 15, 2004, issue of the Chicago Tribune.

In the Illinois legislature, Obama voted for bills to ban double-barrel and break-open shotguns in 28-gauge or larger, .50-caliber rifles, and handguns whose metal melts at less than 800 degrees (SB 1195, 2003; SB 356, 2003).

Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, promise not to “take away” people’s guns. Note the word choice. If they do not “take away” guns, they can still push for laws and regulations to prevent people from buying guns.

Indeed, when running for Congress in 1999, Obama proposed a federal ban on gun stores within 5 miles of a school or park. This would outlaw gun stores almost everywhere in Colorado. He also called for a 500 percent increase in federal taxes on guns and ammunition, according to the Chicago Defender’s Dec. 13, 1999, edition.

Nor can you buy a gun if gun companies are driven into bankruptcy. In the U.S. Senate, Obama voted against a bill (S. 397, 2005), supported by Sens. Ken Salazar and Wayne Allard, which stopped politicians from suing firearms manufacturers, because manufacturers are supposedly culpable for the acts of gun criminals.

Obama’s audaciously disingenuous portrayal of himself as a friend of Second Amendment rights makes one wonder about the credibility of his other promises.